Albright Knox Museum (1900-1905)

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Designed by E. B. Green, who was not only one of Buffalo’s most famous architects at the time, but who was also a close friend of John J. Albright, the Albright-Knox Art Gallery harkens back to the Erectheum of the Athenian Acropolis for its main symbolic imagery.  Seventy-four freestanding columns circumvent the structure, forming the porticoes, hemicycle and loggia of the building, which also includes two Erectheum porches, containing scaled-down duplicates of the original Greek buildings iconic columns.  When completed, the building contained more than 5,000 tons of marble and had more columns than any other building in the United States, except for the Capitol Building in Washington D. C.  The marble was sourced in the same Maryland quarry from which the marble used for the Washington Monument was excavated.

In 1962, the Albright-Knox hired Buffalo native Gordon Bunshaft to provide an addition to the museum.  Designed in the International Style, Bunshaft’s noticeably modern addition uses the same proportions found in the original museum.  This provided formal resonances between the original building and its new addition, while the severity of Bunshaft’s rigidly rectilinear architecture serves as an austere contrast to the opulence of the earlier building.  This contrast is best seen in Bunshaft’s “black box,” which houses the auditorium, and which creates a chromatic dialogue with the white finish of the marble façade of the main museum.

For more information: http://buffaloah.com/a/elmwd/1285/albhist.html